“A hard question and I have no satisfying answer. We aren’t permitted to know the point. It would be no test of faith if we knew the point. We’d know for certain that Hashem exists. Even Moshe Rabbenu, who was permitted to understand everything else, was not allowed to know Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s system of reward and punishment.”

“Well, maybe it takes a Moses to live with such ambiguity,” said Decker. “What I see are lots of things that are unfair. Our legal system is a farce, Rabbi, confessed murderers getting off scot-free because of some technicality. If only there was divine retribution—a meteorite crashing on their heads or bolts of lightning striking them dead—then maybe I could see a purpose to all of it.”

“I have a midrash for you.” Schulman thought for a while, then said, “A quartet of great rabbis—Rabbis Akiva, Ben Zoma, Ben Azzai, and Elisha ben Abouya—went into an orchard to study the hidden recesses of the Torah. All four were very pious men, all were brilliant—tremendous Torah scholars—an absolute prerequisite for the study of Jewish mysticism.”

“Okay,” Decker said.

“Now the word the Gemara uses for orchard is pardes—a very beautiful garden. Some have taken it to mean gan eden—the Garden of Eden, Paradise.”

“The rabbis actually went to Paradise?”

“There is debate on that. What they did was utter the ineffable name of Hashem—the tetragrammaton. Rashi is of the opinion that says their utterances actually brought them into contact with the Shechinah—the Holy Presence. Other commentators say they really weren’t in heaven but the utterance of the Name made it appear to them that they were. Clear?”

Decker said yes.

“Four of our greatest rabbis in the presence of Hashem,” Schulman said. “So what happened to them?”

His voice had taken on a singsong.

“Ben Azzai died. He leaped toward the Shechinah and his soul departed from his body. Ben Zoma also approached the Shechinah, but instead of dying, his mind was torn apart. He went crazy. What’s the logical question, Peter?”

“Why did one go crazy and the other die?”

“Good. Ben Azzai had seen the Shechinah and couldn’t return to the corporeal. What happened was he had reached such a high level of spiritual understanding that his soul no longer had need of a body. Ben Zoma, on the other hand, never reached that level. His mind became saturated with knowledge that he couldn’t assimilate. When the mind can’t accommodate its input, it breaks down.

“The third rabbi, Elisha ben Abouya, the Gemara tells us, ‘cut down the shoots of the orchard.’ What do you think that means?”

“The orchard is symbolic of heaven?” Decker asked.

“A heavenly state.”

Decker thought. “He destroyed heaven.”

“Meaning?”

“He destroyed Hashem.”

“Meaning?”

Decker thought for a moment.

“You can’t destroy Hashem,” he said. “But you can reject Him.”